


Choice and Consequence

by Providentia67



Category: Dororo (2019), Dororo (Anime 2019), Dororo (Anime)
Genre: Brotherhood, Comfort, Families of Choice, Family, Friendship, Gen, Trying to do the right thing, post episode 12
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-26
Updated: 2019-03-27
Packaged: 2019-12-18 04:29:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,150
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18242402
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Providentia67/pseuds/Providentia67
Summary: All Tahomaru wanted was to do right by his people. To be the leader they deserved. But now, faced with the choices he's made in the name of that dream, he is not sure whether the role he plays is that of hero or villain. But maybe it's not too late.Maybe there is still time for him to find the right choice.





	1. Chapter 1

“How is she?”

Tahomaru can see the moment the healer decides not to answer his question.  The old woman’s eyes drop away and her hands tremble as she finishes wrapping the bandages around his head.  The bow of her shoulders begs him not to persist. Beneath the layers of cotton and salve, his eye burns.

They have told him he may never see out of that eye again.

“Tell me.”  He does not envy the woman the task of messenger, but he must know.  Tahomaru doesn’t think he can bear thinking of his own wounds, his own actions in the hours past, but he can spare a moment for his mother.  Before him, the healer cowers and brings a gnarled hand up to her mouth in grief.

“Forgive me.  The lady’s fever has yet to break.  She may not yet last the night.” Her voice shatters as she finishes delivering the news and Tahomaru’s eyes close in sympathy.  His mother has always been well-loved by her servants.

“I have to go.”

The healer protests but Tahomaru doesn’t heed her.  Youth and injury aside he is still the heir of his father’s lands; he will go where he pleases.  He pushes his way from the room and across the compound with singularity of purpose. He must speak with his mother, even if for the last time.  

“Mother.”

He clips his shoulder on the edge of the entryway as he enters his mother’s room and grits his teeth.  Should he lose his eye he will have to adjust to the new blind spot. But Tahomaru shoves the thought aside as he takes in his mother’s pale, sweat-streaked face where she lays limp on the floor.  Red blooms across the bandages wrapped around her chest and beside her, her servants sit with their heads bowed as they weep in silence.

In the quiet of the night, his mother’s rasping breaths are louder than hoofbeats and Tahomaru’s heart aches for it.  Aches that in the end she had not expected to survive her actions. Aches that she injured herself for him, for his father, and for all their people besides.

Aches that even so, the heart she attempted to carve out belongs solely to Hyakkimaru.

To his elder brother.

Pain both physical and emotional driving decorum away, Tahomaru storms inside, grimacing as the women cringe at the shadow he casts in the candlelight.  “Get out.”

They do not need to be told twice.

“T-Tahomaru.”  Surprised to hear his mother’s voice, Tahomaru ignores the figures fleeing past him and kneels at her side.  Turning so that he can see her fully with his good eye. The air comes short in his mouth as warm brown eyes strain to open and land on him.  He catches the hand that reaches for him in both of his.

“Mother.”  He hates the way his voice trembles at the word.  “Mother, why?”

Tears stream from his mother’s face and her gaze drifts to the side where the beheaded statue of the Goddess of Mercy used to stand.  “I’m sorry,” she tells him. "My son, I am so sorry. This should never have become your burden.”

Tahomaru tightens his grip on his mother’s hand.  “It’s alright, Mother. I understand.” And he does.  He truly does. He understands the guilt that has weighed on his mother’s heart from the moment his brother was born.  He understands that now that his father has started them down this path, there is no other way for them to go but forward.  “I will protect our people,” he swears, the pain in his eye intensifying. “Even if that means I have to kill, Hyakkimaru.” There simply is no other choice.

Leadership is sacrifice.  To put one’s people before themselves.  Hyakkimaru… Hyakkimaru is his brother, the man who saved Hyogo, the guardian of that young child who called him brother.  But, he is also the demon-child that haunts his land and his people. To save one would mean to damn the other. How can he, as future lord, choose anything but the welfare of his people?  Even if that means sacrificing the man who should have been closer to him than any other.

There is little doubt in Tahomaru’s mind that his father made his deal with the demons for the sake of ambition.  Why else would Hyakkimaru’s body be taken, and not Lord Daigo’s? Tahomaru bites his lip to keep from cursing before his mother.  Damn him. Damn his father for making a choice out of greed that would force so many others to follow suit out of fear and desperation.

“Tahomaru.” The weak call from his mother alerts Tahomaru to the fact that his hands are shaking.  Whether out of anger, sadness, or fear he does not know, but he eases his grip. “Tahomaru,” she says again to grasp his attention more fully.  “Don’t do this. Don’t sacrifice your own soul for your father’s -for _our_ \- mistakes.”

“What?  Mother, how can you say that?”  His sudden outburst tears at the raw skin of his injury and pain flares.  Tahomaru grips the bandages over his eye as he rounds on his mother. “I must defeat him!  What other choice do I have?”

Unable to bear the look in his mother’s weak eyes Tahomaru looks away, nearly turning his back on her to avoid presenting the full extent of his wound.  His whole body is trembling with the stress of his turmoil.

“There is always a choice, Tahomaru.”  Tentative hands grip the fabric of his robes.  Not daring to touch him fully. “You are a good man, and your brother- he is so _lost_.  He needs your help, my son.”

“And what about me?”  There are tears streaking down Tahomaru’s cheek but he ignores them.  No one is there to see. “Am I not lost? How can you call me a good man when… when I tried to kill my own brother?”

“Look at me, Tahomaru.”  He does, and to Tahomaru’s surprise what his mother greets him with is a smile.  Weak, but genuine. “It’s not too late. You and your brother are both strong, stronger than your father and his demons.”  Her hand shifts to his and grips it with a strength he didn’t know she had. “I _know_ that together you can find the answer.”

He wants to.   _Oh_ how he wants to with a yearning he didn’t know a person could feel.  He wants to know the man that is his brother. Wants nothing more than to avenge the wrongs done onto him and help him purge the land of the demons their father unleashed.

Still.

“But,” he can’t look his mother in the eyes.  “How can I? If I help him, this land will die.”

Her smile remains, but saddens even more as she shakes her head.  “I don’t know.” She lifts her hand to cup the cheek of his uninjured side.  “That is something you will have to discover together.”

One last burden to place on his shoulders.

At her words, something in Tahomaru’s heart hardens with resolve.  “Very well.” He pulls away, standing to his feet as he meets his mother’s gaze for what very well might be the last time.  How sad, he thinks, that only now when the world he has come to know is crumbling before him can he and his mother at last understand one another.  “I will do what you ask, Mother. I swear it.”

He ducks his head into a bow.  Low, and in the deepest respect for the suffering his mother has born all his life in silence.  “I will find a way to save them. I will save my brother and my people both.”

Tahomaru turns and leaves without another word.  To stay any longer would be to belittle the oath he has sworn.  But in his heart Tahomaru dedicates to memory the image of his mother’s face and the hope and joy it held there.  His heart swells that finally, _finally_ he could make his mother proud.

He _will_ make her proud.


	2. Chapter 2

“You look like her, you know?”

Hyakkimaru’s blank gaze does not change as Tahomaru watches it across the orange glow of their campfire.  If his words have impact -and he does not know if they do- his older brother gives nothing away to show it.  Adjacent to the brothers who are sitting opposite one another, Dororo does shift. The young girl -and she is a girl, even if she still thinks she has Tahomaru fooled- looks between the two, although her eyes harden a little whenever they cross Tahomaru.

“Our mother,” he presses ahead, careful not to act as if he’s noticed Dororo’s peaked interest.  “You look like her.”

At this last, Hyakkimaru does angle his face away from the fire to at least partially meet Tahomaru.  His blank eyes are wide and there is a slight downturn to his lips that, along with the tilt of his head, make the older man seem like little more than a curious pup.

“Mama?” he asks, and Tahomaru has no doubt he picked up the childish vernacular from their third companion.  

Tahomaru nods and lets his gaze drop back to where he is using a broken off piece of a branch to stoke their fire.  “Yes.”

And he does.  It was not something Tahomaru had ever taken the time to truly register, but he does resemble their father to an almost uncanny degree.  But Hyakkimaru… his elder brother is fine-boned and soft where Tahomaru and Lord Daigo are all sharp-edges and severity. This lost child’s hair hangs down in soft waves from where it is pulled back instead of curling with the wind like Tahomaru’s.  

It is comforting, he is surprised to discover, to see so much of his mother in the man he has chosen to chase.

“You should know, she prayed for you every day.  Our mother.” Her every waking moment and possibly even as she slept, he thinks but does not say.  “She loved you.”

More than she ever did me.

Tahomaru might have chosen to honor his mother’s hopes, her sacrifices, and her dreams, but he does not know if he will ever truly forgive her that.  His eyebrows knit together under the cover of shadows, and he turns his head so that the blind spot in his vision hides Dororo from his view. He does not care to see shine of pity in the girl’s eyes just then.  Instead he’d rather see his brother’s reaction.

“Mama…”  As he watches Hyakkimaru feel his way around the word, Tahomaru considers him.  Their alliance is so new, so fragile and fledgling in its inception that he is only just now being allowed a glimpse of the man his brother has become.

“She was  _ really  _ pretty,” says Dororo, waving her hands in the air in some bombastic gesture.  It draws the attention of both brothers and forces Tahomaru to let go of his brooding.  It also earns the smallest upward tick in Hyakkimaru’s lips. A smile that is so small but all the more glaring for how little Tahomaru has observed his brother emote.

Then it slides from his face as Hyakkimaru turns.  “…Ta-Tahomaru?” He clenches the fist of his right prosthetic once, and then makes an aborted attempt to reach outward until a lick of flame brushes it's wooden fingertips.

“Bro!”

“Fool!”

Dororo and Tahomaru move at the same time to stop the idiot from setting himself aflame.  The girl throws her arms around Hyakkimaru’s middle and hauls him back while Tahomaru swats the hand away with the sheathed blade of his sword.  When the pair have thankfully tumbled back off the collapsed tree trunk they’d been using as a bench and away from the fire, Tahomaru sighs.

“Stupid,” he curses and pinches the space between his eyebrows where an ache is beginning to form.  “I’ve seen you conquer demons and yet you are nearly bested by your own campfire?” He shakes his head.

When Hyakkimaru manages to right himself, setting down Dororo beside him by the back of her clothes, it is with a petulant expression of furrowed brows and puffed cheeks.  This time he points to himself, then Tahomaru, before trying again. “Tahomaru… too?”

A wry smile makes its way onto Tahomaru’s face.  “No,” he says. “I look like our father.”

And he’s been thinking a lot about that too.  In the days Tahomaru spent tracking his brother’s wanderings.  When he’d first been met with open hostility and distrust after offering his aid.  There hadn’t been much for him to do but follow from the shadows and think. Think about the dilemma he was faced with, and what it meant for his brother’s body to be sacrificed for his father’s ambition.  Everything lord Daigo Kagemitsu wanted. For everything Hyakkimaru was.

Wasn’t it only natural for the lord of a prosperous land to desire a son to carry on his legacy?  To bring about that legacy in the lord’s own image?

Where his mother had always been a presence of cold melancholy in Tahomaru’s memory, he had many fond ones of his father.  For as long as he could remember his father was always there telling him how proud he was. Praising Tahomaru. Saying how much he loved Tahomaru.

Considering the man sitting across from him, Tahomaru had to wonder if perhaps  _ he  _ was one of the gifts his father had bartered from the demons.  

One hand reached up to graze the raised, healing scar tissue that bisected his eye from top to bottom.  Hyakkimaru had already taken one of his eyes. A shiver ran down Tahomaru’s spine at the thought, but what if one day they slew one of the demons from the Hall of Hell, and instead of their land suffering natural disaster or war, it was Tahomaru that fate came for?

“... Sorry.”

The word is so unexpected Tahomaru isn’t sure how to respond at first.  He stills all movement and has to work up the will to lift his head and meet his brother’s quietly sad features.  “What?”

“I was… angry.”  Hyakkimaru looks away, lingers for a moment on Dororo who is pretending not to be paying attention, then back to Tahomaru.  “Sorry.”

A spark of black humor causes Tahomaru to laugh.  “Don’t apologize to me, elder brother.” He lowers his hand to offer Hyakkimaru a pained but genuine smile.  “I was reckless, acting without thinking. If my eye is the price for coming to my senses so that we can find a way to rid our land of evil and suffering, so be it.”

Feet scuff the ground.  “Well, whatever. Here.”  Dororo thrusts one of their cooked fish under his nose and Tahomaru starts.  He looks her way, but is met with the girl’s back as she hands the next one over to Hyakkimaru and stands sentry beside him until she is certain that he has eaten at least half.  Only then does she nod in approval and sit back down with her own meal in hand.

They eat in silence for a while, both Tahomaru and Dororo keeping watchful eye on their blind companion.  Hyakkimaru is a point of convergence for them. Dororo might not entirely trust his intentions after what happened near Banmon and Tahomaru might not entirely care for the way she seems to take pleasure in weedling promises of money from him at every opportunity, but at some point an unspoken agreement had settled between them.

Protect what is precious.

Don’t lose.

“I will help you reclaim your body,” he promises, and Hyakkimaru pauses mid bite to stare across the flame at him.  “Even if it costs me my life.” He rejects his father’s legacy. He rejects the man who could stand by and watch while his sons fought to the death for the sake of his own selfishness.

“All I ask is that in return you save our people.”  

The people of his land have a story that they tell about Lord Daigo Kagemitsu.  That he sealed away the demons that terrorized his land and brought prosperity to his people.  Tahomaru now knows that is nothing but a lie. But he has seen and felt Hyakkimaru’s strength, and he sees in his elder brother the possibility of making that fantastical dream a reality.

“Stupid.”

Tahomaru reflexively snarls and rounds on Dororo who is chewing away at her fish with an expression of forced nonchalance.  “What did you say?”

“I said you’re being stupid, stupid,” she says and sticks her tongue out at him like the child she is.  “Why are you talking like you’re going to die?” She swallows down the last of her fish and strides over to Hyakkimaru who doesn’t budge as she flings an arm around his neck and clenches her other fist in a gesture of determined confidence.

“Bro’s the strongest there is, and you’re pretty strong too.  So, we’ll definitely beat all those demons and your mean papa.”  She turns her smile on Hyakkimaru. “Right?”

His brother doesn’t pull his blank gaze from Tahomaru, but does give the barest nod.  “Mm.”

“We’re going to win.  And you’re one of us now, so you can’t lose either, okay?”

Something in Tahomaru’s heart swells as he meets Dororo’s impish grin, and he nods.  “Okay.” Hyakkimaru too, he sees, is giving him that little smile of his. And it reappears every now and then whenever the older man pauses between bites of his fish.

His older brother is smiling at him.

Tahomaru doesn’t understand why such a simple sight is causing his eyes to sting.  He doesn’t understand how he can feel like some vital, missing piece of himself was returned through Hyakkimaru when he never knew it was gone in the first place.

What he does know is that this feels right.  That the three of them here, now, are meant to be together.  To help make each other whole. Tahomaru will lend his strength to return his brother’s body.  In return Hyakkimaru will help Tahomaru earn back the soul of his people that his father sold. And Dororo, she will keep them human.  The girl who lost everything to the world except herself.

Alone Tahomaru doesn’t think they’d stand a chance.  In truth even as he’d chosen on his mother’s deathbed to seek Hyakkimaru, he hadn’t expected to accomplish much more than some small measure of atonement.  But this, right here, this is family. Not the secrets and lies that had poisoned Tahomaru’s relationship with his parents for years.

Family is the earnest fumbling of emotions that accompany trying to do what’s best for one another.  Family is a lost and wounded lordling, a blind and limbless boy, and an orphan girl sitting around a fire promising to look after one another as they take on all the powers of hell.

And whatever future may lay before them, Tahomaru thinks he can live with that.


End file.
